Tag: MoMA
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The film Mary Pickford didn’t want you to see – now restored by MoMA
Lubitsch-Directed “Rosita” (1923) Is On Screens Again After 95 Years and Worth Seeing I was on the fence about attending MoMA’s re-premiere of Rosita last week, initially. (This was on May 25, 2018) I’d heard it was being presented with its original cue-sheet score, and Pickford herself had perpetuated the legend that the film wasn’t…
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What’s a Nice Car Like You Doing in a Comedy Short Like This?
Putting Humpty Together Again, Thanks to the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress It isn’t often that a two-reel comedy can be reassembled by accessing a reel from one archive and a reel from another, but we were fortunate in the case of this film. Oh! What a Day (1918) is a…
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Buster Keaton’s Leap to ‘One Week’, and Marcel Perez’s Jump from “Split-reelers” to 2-reelers
Stretching to Two Reel Length was no Stretch For Marcel Perez What has always struck me as remarkable about Buster Keaton (well, one of several things) is his maturity as a filmmaker at the ripe old age of 25. His first solo release, One Week (1920), looks nothing like any of the 14 two-reel Arbuckle comedies…
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The Humor of “Jackass” and AFV In the Early 1900s, as Performed by Marcel Perez and Others
The injury humor of Johnny Knoxville, the Farrelly Brothers, and thousands of anonymous klutzes is nothing new — French and Italian comedians were doing it during movies’ first decade. Last September, a lot of people sent me a link to an article in the New York Times that articulated something I’d been thinking for some…
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Stuart Oderman (1940-2017) – silent film pianist
The Adventures of Prince Achmed concluded, and as the curtain in MoMA’s Titus 2 theatre closed and the lights came up, I took my bows by the piano and then headed back to the booth, as I’d done after all my shows. This time I found a post-it note on the table in the back…
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coming in January 2017: 3 special episodes of the podcast
coming in January 2017: 3 special episodes of the podcast This mini-episode is more of a trailer of sorts for three special podcast episodes that I will post simultaneously in the first half of January 2017.In this 10-minute mini-podcast – first off, I recap some fall DVD releases and a couple that are on tap…
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All finished with the “Auteurist” series at MoMA
Well, stick a fork in me…I am done with the 26 performances at MoMA in June, as well as the Sept-May run of the silents in Charles Silver’s “Auteurist” series, and have come out the other end. It’s taken a day or two for the music to stop swirling around in my head. I initially…
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video blog June 11, 2010 – playing for Fields, actualities, early pioneers
Here’s the June 11th video blog in which I discuss playing for a Fields silent, as well as for two programs of early films at MoMA and how it went in comparison to the performances of the same show last fall. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yi-eYTJegM&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
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videoblog: W.C. Fields, the Lumiere bros., et al
Here is my latest videoblog, (hopefully) the first in a series of near-daily blog postings I’m hoping to do this month, since I’ll be accompanying one or two shows every day. I discuss preparing for a show of W.C. Fields in So’s Your Old Man (1926) at the Library for the Performing Arts (6/8), and…
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3 weeks of daily silent film screenings at MoMA in June
I will be rawther busy in June. Here is the schedule for the repeat-showings of nearly all the silent film programs in Charles Silver’s Auteurist History of Film series. It’s going to be a blast revisiting all these, and in three weeks of daily screenings of silent film. This go-round, the shows will be held…